Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  Alex left a green desk lamp burning at the Hutch. Dawes wouldn’t like it, but she couldn’t quite bear to leave the rooms in darkness.

  She was unlocking the door to the Vanderbilt entryway when a text arrived from Dean Sandow: Have confabbed w Centurion. Rest easy.

  She wanted to throw her phone across the courtyard. Rest easy? If Sandow intended to handle the murder directly, why had she wasted her time—and her coin of compulsion—visiting the crime scene? She knew the dean didn’t trust her. Why would he? He’d probably been up with a cup of chamomile tea when he got the news of Tara’s death, his big dog asleep on his feet, waiting by the phone to make sure nothing went horribly wrong at the prognostication and Alex didn’t humiliate herself or Lethe. Of course he wouldn’t want her anywhere near a murder.

  Rest easy. Everything else went unsaid: I don’t expect you to handle this. No one expects you to handle this. No one expects you to do anything but keep from drawing unwanted attention until we get Darlington back.

  If they could find him. If they could somehow bring him home from whatever dark place he’d gone. In less than a week they’d attempt the new-moon rite. Alex didn’t understand the specifics, only that Dean Sandow believed it would work and that, until it did, her job was to make sure that no one asked too many questions about Lethe’s missing golden boy. At least now she didn’t have a homicide to worry about or a grumpy detective to deal with.

  When she entered the common room to find Mercy already awake, Alex was glad she’d stopped to shower and change. She had thought college dorms would be like hotels, long hallways pocked with bedrooms, but Vanderbilt felt more like an old-fashioned apartment building, full of tinny music, people humming and laughing as they went in and out of the shared bathrooms, the slamming of doors echoing up and down the central staircase. The squat she’d shared with Len and Hellie and Betcha and the others had been noisy, but its sighs and moans had been different, defeated, like a dying body.

  “You’re awake,” Alex said.

  Mercy glanced up from her copy of To the Lighthouse, its pages thick with pastel sticky notes. Her hair was in an elaborate braid, and instead of bundling up in their ratty afghan, she’d thrown a silk robe patterned with blue hyacinths over her jeans. “Did you even come home last night?”

  Alex took a chance. “Yeah. You were already snoring. I just got up to get a run in.”

  “You went to the gym? Are the showers even open this early?”

  “For crew and stuff.” Alex wasn’t actually sure this was true, but she knew Mercy cared less about sports than just about anything. Besides, Alex didn’t own running shoes or a sports bra, and Mercy never asked about that. People didn’t go looking for lies that didn’t have a reason, and why would anyone lie about going for a morning run?

  “Psychos.” Mercy tossed a stapled stack of pages at Alex, who caught them but couldn’t quite bring herself to look. Her Milton essay. Mercy had offered to give it a read. Alex could already see the red pen all over it.

  “How was it?” she asked, shuffling into their bedroom.

  “Not terrible.”

  “But not good,” Alex muttered as she entered their tiny cave of a room and stripped out of her sweats. Mercy had covered her side of the wall in posters, family photos, ticket stubs from Broadway shows, a poem written in Chinese characters that Mercy said her parents made her memorize for dinner parties when she was a kid but that she’d fallen in love with, a series of Alexander McQueen sketches, a starburst of red envelopes. Alex knew it was partially an act, a construction of the person Mercy wanted to be at Yale, but every item, every object connected her to something. Alex felt like someone had come along early and snipped all of her threads. Her grandmother had been her closest link to any kind of real past, but Estrea Stern had died when Alex was nine. And Mira Stern had grieved her but she’d had no interest in her mother’s stories or songs, the way she cooked or prayed. She called herself an explorer— homeopathy, allopathy, healing gemstones, Kryon, spirit science, three months when she’d put spirulina in everything—each embraced with the same fierce optimism, dragging Alex along from one silver bullet to the next. As for Alex’s father, Mira was hazy on the details, hazier when pushed. He was a question mark, Alex’s phantom half. All she knew was that he loved the ocean, that he was a Gemini, and that he was brown—Mira couldn’t tell her if he was Dominican or Guatemalan or Puerto Rican, but she did know he was Aquarius rising with his moon in Scorpio. Or something. Alex could never remember.

  She’d brought few objects from home. She hadn’t wanted to return to Ground Zero to pick up any of her old stuff, and the belongings in her mother’s apartment were little-girl things—plastic ponies, rosettes made of colored ribbons, bubble-gum-scented erasers. In the end, she’d packed a hunk of smoky quartz that her mother had given her, her grandmother’s nearly illegible recipe cards, an earring tree she’d had since she was eight, and a retro map of California, which she hung next to Mercy’s poster of Coco Chanel. “I know she was a fascist,” Mercy had said. “But I can’t quit her.”

  Dean Sandow had suggested Alex purchase a few sketchbooks and charcoal too, and she’d dutifully placed them atop her half-empty dresser as cover.

  Alex had tried to choose the easiest subjects possible—English lit, her Spanish requirement, an introductory sociology course, painting. She’d thought at least English would be easy because she liked to read. Even when things had been really bad in school, she’d still been able to fake her way through those classes. But this English was an entirely different language. She’d gotten a D on her first paper, with a note that said, This is a book report. It had been just like high school except she’d actually been trying.

  “I love you, but this essay is a mess,” said Mercy from the common room. “It would probably be better if you spent less time working out and more time working.” No shit, thought Alex. Mercy was going to be in for a real surprise if she ever asked Alex to jog somewhere or lift something heavy. “We can go through it over breakfast.”

  All Alex wanted was sleep, but going back to bed didn’t seem to be the thing people did after a run, and Mercy had done her the courtesy of editing her awful English paper, so she definitely needed to say yes to breakfast. Lethe had provided Alex with a tutor, an American Studies grad student named Angus who spent most of their weekly sessions bent over Alex’s work, snorting in exasperation and shaking his head like a horse plagued by flies. Mercy wasn’t exactly gentle, but she was a lot more patient.

  Alex yanked on jeans and a T-shirt, then the black cashmere sweater she’d prized so much when she’d picked it out at Target. It was only when she’d seen Lauren’s lush lavender pullover and foolishly asked, “What is this made of?” that she’d understood there were as many kinds of cashmere as there were of cush, and that her own sad sweater pulled from the sale rack was strictly stems and seeds. At least it was warm.

  She gave her coat another spray of cedar oil in case any Veil stink lingered, hefted up her bag, hesitated. She opened her dresser drawer and dug around in the back until she found the little bottle of what looked like ordinary eye drops. Before she could think too much about it, she tilted her head back and squeezed two drops of basso belladonna into each eye. It was a stimulant, a strong one, a bit like magical Adderall. The crash was brutal, but there was no way Alex was going to make it through the morning without a little help. The old boys of Lethe had all kept diaries of their time in the society, and they had plenty of tricks they used to cut corners. Alex had discovered this one after Darlington was gone.

  Back into the morning cold with Mercy beside her. Alex always liked the walk from Old Campus to the JE dining hall, but the quad looked less beautiful with a gray day on it. At night, the grubby packs of snow gleamed vague and white, but now they were grimy and brown at the edges, heaps of dirty sheets ready for the wash. Harkness Tower loomed over it all like a melting candle, its chimes sounding the hour.

  It had taken Alex a few weeks to realize w
hy Yale looked wrong to her. It was the complete lack of glamour. In L.A., even in the Valley, even on its worst days, the city had style. Even Alex’s mother in her purple eye shadow and chunks of turquoise, even their dumpy apartment with its shawls over the lamps, even her no-money friends, gathered at backyard barbecues, recovering from the night before, girls in tight shorts, midriffs bare, long hair swinging to the small of the back, boys with shaved heads or silky topknots or thick dreads. Everything, everybody, had a look.

  But here the colors seemed to blur. There was a kind of uniform—jocks in backward baseball caps and long loose shorts they wore regardless of the chill, keys on lanyards that they swung like dandies; girls in jeans and quilted jackets; theater kids with crests of sink-dyed Kool-Aid-colored hair. Your clothes, your car, the music pumping from it, were supposed to tell people who you were. Here it was like someone had filed down all of the serial numbers, wiped away the fingerprints. Who are you? Alex would sometimes think, looking at another girl in a navy peacoat, pale face like a waning moon beneath a wool cap, ponytail lying like a dead animal over her shoulder. Who are you?

  Mercy was an exception. She favored wild florals paired with a seemingly endless parade of eyeglasses that she wore on glittery strings around her neck and that Alex had yet to see her use. Today she’d opted for a brocade coat embroidered with poinsettias that made her look like the world’s youngest eccentric grandma. When Alex had raised her brows, Mercy had just said, “I like loud.”

  They entered the Jonathan Edwards common room, warm air closing over them in a gust. Winter light slatted over the leather couches in watery squares—all of it a coy, falsely humble prelude to the soaring rafters and stone alcoves of the dining hall.

  Beside her, Mercy laughed. “I only see you smile like that when we’re going to eat.”

  It was true. If Beinecke was Darlington’s temple, then the dining hall was where Alex worshipped daily. At the squat in Van Nuys, they’d lived on Taco Bell and Subway when they were flush, cereal—sometimes dry, sometimes soaked in soda if she got desperate—when they were broke. She’d steal a bag of hot dog buns whenever they were invited to barbecues at Eitan’s place so they had something to put peanut butter on, and once she’d tried to eat Loki’s dry kibble, but her teeth couldn’t manage it. Even when she’d lived with her mom, it had been all frozen food, boil-in-a-bag rice dishes, then weird shakes and nutrition bars after Mira got suckered into selling Herbalife. Alex had brought protein pudding mix to school for weeks.

  The idea that there could be hot food just waiting for her three times a day was still shocking. But it made no difference what she ate or how much of it; it was as if her body, starved for so long, was ravenous now. Every hour her stomach would growl, chiming like the Harkness bells. Alex always took two sandwiches with her for the day and a stack of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a napkin. The supply of food in her backpack was like a security blanket. If this all ended, if it all got taken away, she wouldn’t go hungry for at least a couple of days.

  “It’s a good thing you work out so much,” Mercy noted as Alex shoveled granola into her mouth. Except, of course, she didn’t and eventually her metabolism would stop cooperating, but she just didn’t care. “Do you think it’s too much to wear a skirt to Omega Meltdown tomorrow night?”

  “You’re still committed to this frat thing?” Omega Meltdown was part of Mercy’s Five Party Plan to get her and Alex to be more social.

  “Some of us don’t have a hot cousin to take us interesting places, so until I’m offered a higher caliber of party, yes. This isn’t high school. We don’t have to be the losers waiting to get invited out. I’ve wasted too many good outfits on you.”

  “Okay, I’ll wear a skirt if you wear a skirt,” Alex said. “Also … I’m going to need to borrow a skirt.” No one dressed up for frat parties, but if Mercy wanted to look cute for a bunch of guys in hazmat suits, then that was what they would do. “You should wear those boots you have with all the laces. I’m going back for seconds.”

  The basso belladonna kicked in just as she was stacking peanut butter pancakes onto her tray, and she drew in a sharp breath as she came wide awake. It felt a little like someone cracking an ice-cold egg on the nape of your neck. Of course, it was at that moment that Professor Belbalm waved her over from her table below the leaded windows in the corner of the dining room, her sleek white hair gleaming like a seal’s head breaching a wave.

  “Fuck,” Alex said under her breath, and then cringed when Belbalm’s mouth quirked as if she’d heard her.

  “Gimme a minute,” she told Mercy, and set down her tray at their table.

  Marguerite Belbalm was French but spoke flawless English. Her hair was snow white and fell in a smooth, severe bob that looked like it had been carved from bone and set carefully on her head like a helmet, so little did it move. She wore asymmetrical black garments that hung in supremely chic folds, and she had a stillness that made Alex twitch. Alex had been in awe of her from the first glimpse of her slender, immaculate form at the Jonathan Edwards orientation, since the first whiff of her peppery perfume. She was a women’s studies professor, the head of JE College, and one of the youngest people to ever achieve tenure. Alex didn’t know exactly what tenure implied or if “young” meant thirty or forty or fifty. Belbalm might have been any of those, depending on the light. Right now, with the basso belladonna in Alex’s system, Belbalm looked a dewy thirty and the light pinging off her white hair glittered like tiny shooting stars.

  “Hi,” Alex said, hovering behind one of the wooden chairs.

  “Alexandra,” Belbalm said, resting her chin on her folded hands. She always got Alex’s name wrong, and Alex never corrected her. Admitting her name was Galaxy to this woman was unthinkable. “I know you’re breakfasting with your friend, but I need to steal you away.” Breakfasting had to be the classiest verb Alex had ever heard. Right up there with summering. “You have a moment?” Her questions never sounded like questions. “You’ll come to the office, yes? So that we can talk.”

  “Of course.” Alex said, when what she really wanted to ask was, Am I in trouble? When Alex was put on academic probation at the end of her first semester, Belbalm had given her the news sitting in her elegantly appointed office, three of Alex’s papers laid out before her: one on The Right Stuff, for her sociology class on organizational disasters; one on Elizabeth Bishop’s “Late Air,” a poem she’d chosen for its meager length, only to realize she had nothing to say about it and couldn’t even use up space with nice long quotes; and one for her class on Swift, which she’d thought would be fun because of Gulliver’s Travels. As it turned out, the Gulliver’s Travels she’d read had been for children and nothing like the impenetrable original.

  At the time, Belbalm had smoothed her hand over the typed pages and gently said that Alex should have disclosed her learning disability. “You’re dyslexic, yes?”

  “Yes,” Alex had lied, because she needed some reason for how very far behind everyone else she was. Alex had the sense she should be ashamed of failing to correct Belbalm, but she’d take all the help she could get.

  So now what? They were too early in the semester for Alex to have screwed up all over again.

  Belbalm winked and gave Alex’s hand a squeeze. “It’s nothing terrible. You needn’t look quite so much like you’re ready to flee.” Her fingers were cool and bony, hard as marble; a single large stone glinted dark gray on her ring finger. Alex knew she was staring, but the drug in her system had made the ring a mountain, an altar, a planet in orbit. “I prefer singular pieces,” Belbalm said. “Simplicity, hmm?”

  Alex nodded, tearing her eyes away. She was wearing a pair of three-sets-for-five-dollars earrings that she’d boosted from the racks at Claire’s in the Fashion Square Mall. Simplicity.

  “Come,” Belbalm said, rising and waving one elegant hand.

  “Let me just get my bag,” said Alex. She returned to Mercy and jammed a pancake into her mouth, chewing frantically.r />
  “Did you see this?” Mercy said, turning her phone to Alex. “Some New Haven girl got killed last night. In front of Payne Whitney. You must have walked right by the crime scene this morning!”

  “Damn,” said Alex, casting cursory eyes over the screen of Mercy’s phone. “I saw the lights. I just thought there was a car accident.”

  “So scary. She was only nineteen.” Mercy rubbed her arms. “What does La Belle Belbalm want? I thought we were going to edit your paper.”

  The world glittered. She felt awake, able to do anything. Mercy was being generous and Alex wanted to work with her before the buzz began to fade, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Belbalm has time now and I need to talk to her about my schedule. I’ll meet you back in the room?”

  That bitch can lie like she’s breathing, Len had once said of Alex. He’d said a lot of things before he died.

  Alex trailed the professor out of the dining hall and across the courtyard to her office. She felt shitty leaving Mercy behind. Mercy was from a wealthy suburb of Chicago. Her parents were both professors, and she’d written some kind of crazy paper that had impressed even Darlington. She and Alex had nothing in common. But they’d both been the kid with nobody to sit next to in the cafeteria and Mercy hadn’t laughed when Alex had mispronounced Goethe. Around her and Lauren, it was easier to pretend to be the person she was supposed to be here. Still, if La Belle Belbalm demanded your presence, you didn’t argue.

  Belbalm had two assistants, who rotated at the desk outside of her office. This morning it was the very peppy, very pretty Colin Khatri. He was a member of Scroll and Key and some kind of chem prodigy.